The vine had lanced cleanly through Matt`s stomach, and he still wasn`t sure it hurt more than mana draining did. But two could play at that game. With his spear already falling apart, the only problem was a lack of immediately available weaponry. He decided to take a flyer on a long shot, slashing at the vine in his stomach with his bare hand in a karate-chop motion. It immediately turned to ash.

　　Matt had not anticipated how bad ash in an open abdominal wound would hurt. He reeled so hard from it, he almost didn`t dodge the next lance. He ashed that one a moment later, and felt the mana he drew from it overcharge Rub Some Dirt In It so hard, the pain almost completely stopped hurting, even if it didn`t quite close. Then the damn plant mana-siphoned him again.

　　If not for the mindlessness of the Scourge, that would have been it. Something about its defenselessness or sheer lack of mass had intensified the mana lances, and each one sent Matt reeling. But it had no experience with its own attacks, no protocols or instincts that told it how to deal with them. As it struck at Matt`s mana, it used that energy to send vine after vine at him. Matt was picking up injuries every second, but in doing so, he was also constantly healing the damage to his mana with his own mana draining trait. It was, however briefly, a stalemate.

　　Matt was reluctant to go toe to toe with the Scourge while playing its own game, but he had little choice. The Scourge was generating new vines fast enough to effectively keep him from reaching for any other options he might have, and even a moment`s distraction might leave him with the kind of wound he couldn`t heal from. For now, he was stuck. But at the same time he was picking up cuts and stab wounds all over his body, the Scourge was slowing.

　　"Matt! Keep going! It`s running out of steam, I`m sure of it!" Lucy screamed, elated. Matt redoubled his efforts at cutting the vines. Slowly but surely, the vines` growth became manageably slow. But that also meant less and less mana for Matt to draw on. It was going to be close, but at the moment he felt like he was ahead.

　　That feeling of assurance ended in the form of two strikes simultaneously hitting his back. Somehow, somewhere in the Scourge`s generations of memories, it had built up some reflexes related to ambush attacks and put them to use here. Both Matt`s shoulders were pierced, and each strike seemed to hit different important parts necessary for moving his arms. With incredible effort against the pain, he managed to get his left hand up, and spun in place to ash both vines. He felt his wounds closing from the excess energy just as a new notification popped.

　　Ding!

　　Mana Vampire Trait Deactivated.

　　That was all. It was one of the shortest messages Matt had ever received. He was completely out of weapons, fighting an underground enemy that couldn`t be hit through the dirt anyway, and as he turned around, he saw the Scourge slowly but effectively building another set of vines Matt had no way to deal with. It would have meant death, except for one little detail.

　　Matt owned more than one shovel. He had forgotten he had, until he had found it still wedged in the ribcage of a remarkably undecayed Gaian Ape in the entranceway of one of his least favorite dungeons.

　　As Matt used Spring Fighter to close the distance on the Scourge, he felt his skills and stats leave him one by one under a steady barrage of mana drain. His combat skill was gone, then his healing skill. Survivor`s Reflexes disappeared. Even Palette of the Conqueror fell, leaving him only with a shovel and an incredibly enhanced ability to use it.

　　Somehow, as the shovelhead pierced the earth, he just knew it was a perfect shot. Like a crabapple out of a spudgun at the end of a long day, it was going to hit. His digging skill`s critical hit came up good. From experimentation, he knew he couldn`t use the skill to dig through anything but dirt or things an awful lot like it, so it wouldn`t hurt the taproot by itself. But that didn`t mean the taproot wasn`t along for the dirt-flinging ride.

　　As the taproot sailed through the air, Matt saw it wasn`t what he thought it would be. It was beautiful, in a way. All the Mana in this part of the world, all the power contained in a human life, weeks of strengthening sunlight, most of Matt`s possessions and anything else it could lay its hands on were all packed into it. And growing off it was another, smaller root, just like it. The next iteration of the Scourge as it would eventually metastasize across the planet again.

　　Matt would make sure it wouldn`t.

　　"Lucy, do it. Do it now!"

　　Lucy was, in a lot of ways, less of a guardian than she might have been. She didn`t have the chance to study and learn nearly as much as she needed to be a real guide. She didn`t have the support of the system to fill in the gaps. But that didn`t mean she was useless. And among the many useful things she could do was one all important thing. She could use Matt`s estate system, including his single-purchase good-for-anything voucher.

　　With its door purposefully left wide open, a mobile nullsteel bunker appeared behind the Scourge as if from nowhere. Movement, as they had guessed, was considered a purchase under the estate system`s rules.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

　　While the taproot flew, Matt let his pack fall to the ground. From it, he pulled the last thing he had that could be considered a weapon. It was a simple tube, one he had planned for this moment. With his free hand, he pulled out the favorite thing he owned, besides his Gaian shovel. It was a ball, about three inches across, made of what he strongly suspected was Gaian Nullsteel.

　　As the ball sped towards the Scourge, it finally got one of its vines into play. Matt knew it couldn`t be desperate, but it made him feel much better to think that its attempts to swat the ball away were just that. They didn`t work. The shot was carrying the accumulated genius of a desperate people, and affected the vines much more than it should have. The vines disintegrated as they touched the ball, and the shot kept going.

　　It impacted deep into the flesh of the taproot, and both flew back into the bunker. Matt used every ounce of his stamina to get to the door and close it.

　　He took a deep breath. It was over.

　　"Matt, you dumbass, it`s going to explode!"

　　He wouldn`t admit it for years, but Matt had in fact forgotten that dying taproots did in fact explode. If the evidence of various shattered nullsteel pieces they had seen around Gaia was any indication, they in fact exploded pretty hard. In all the excitement, he had forgotten that too.

　　So the Gaian landscape saw a man in a hastily donned Gaian tunic with a couple holes in it and unlaced enchanted boots run across its fields. The little girl he travelled around floated with him as they busted ass to get as far away from the magitech storage shed as they could before it blew up and killed them both.

　　Luckily, the explosion took a while. Even more luckily, Matt had remembered to bring his non-nullsteel shovel. When the explosion went off, he had just enough time to dig a trench just deep enough to keep his skin from getting peeled off by the sudden sandstorm created.

　　—

　　"I can`t believe you had to fight it naked. We are getting you new armor, pronto. You look like a hospital patient in that tunic."

　　"I`d like to say I still have my old survivor`s garb somewhere, but I think the Scourge probably got it. We can get some more." Matt was thoughtful for a moment. "Plus, I was wearing two sets of clothes for at least most of that fight. If you think about it, I was clothed the entire fight, on average."

　　"Nope. This is not a trend-line thing, Matt. This is a binary thing. We are figuring out some sort of contingency for this. You are never, and I mean never, going to fight naked again."

　　Matt laughed. "Deal."

　　They had been walking for a bit now, having stopped only to dowse out the location of Matt`s nullsteel shovel. It wasn`t long before they came to their destination.

　　"It`s completely filled with ash, Matt."

　　"Yeah. On it." Matt hefted his shovel and got to work. After the taproot had gone, every last bit of vine had apparently ashed with it, leaving a big, deep field of ash on a large part of their estate, with spider-web like patterns moving outward. These were the feeler vines that had gone out looking for more resources. Apparently they were able to grow on the other side, and this dungeon room had been almost filled with them when the Scourge popped.

　　Luckily, ash was enough like dirt that Matt`s digging skill didn`t mind it.

　　"Well, that`s hopeful." Matt had dug out the bulk of the ash, and a minute or so of wiping and blowing on the plinth revealed it was basically intact. He touched it, only to see a "down for maintenance" notification pop up. He would have absolute confirmation, but the dungeon seemed to still be working in most senses, sans anyone to actually run the thing. It was a good sign.

　　Still, he would have liked to talk to Barry.

　　Ding!

　　Achievement Complete: Fought the Scourge

　　Matt, if you are reading this, you have done the impossible. When I was putting together this award, I learned a fun thing about how the system archives information. It has to know what`s living and dangerous on a planet so it knows how to dole out rewards, and the Scourge was the most dangerous thing on the planet at one point. So I`ve learned some stuff.

　　I can`t let you in on everything I know, but the relevant point is this: It`s really dead. What Leel did to call it back is a one-time thing, essentially leaning on an echo of something that once existed to recreate it and destroying that echo at the same time. In its later form, the Scourge abandoned seeds in favor of distributing taproots, so you don`t have to worry about that, either. It`s well and truly gone.

　　I`m going to be honest. I didn`t think you could actually do it. Now, we`ve been in that situation before, but that was with Bonecats and Gaian Apes, things any well-leveled adventurer could have taken on their own, or in a team. This was a world-ending supermonster, even weakened. You do the math on what that means for prizes. I can`t get you all of them right away, but I put together a little bit of an advance pack. The Gaians helped. Don`t ask. You will get it later.

　　Ring the bell, Matt. This fight is over. I`m so, so proud of you. I`m so very glad.

　　Love you guys,

　　Barry

　　"We love you too, Barry." Matt smiled. Lucy nodded in agreement. Barry was fine. Now there were just a few more people to check on.